


This Feathered Crown

by draconicsockpuppet



Category: Dwarf Fortress, Untitled Goose Game (Video Game)
Genre: Crack, Dwarven Politics, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-26 23:42:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21109109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draconicsockpuppet/pseuds/draconicsockpuppet
Summary: In the year 1313 of the Age of the Dragon, the surviving dwarves of the Entrancing Vestibule gathered in the human town of Lilacmarsh to set out for the far south: the Endless Icefields. With them they took six geese. By the time they'd established themselves in their new home, a seventh had joined the flock, and no one knew where it had come from.So begins the tale of Zikel Proudhonk.





	This Feathered Crown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tuesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/gifts).

In the year 738 of the Age of the Hydra and Dragon, Nimu Loudsiege of Loghollow toppled a statue in The Mourning of Sacks, a human temple to all the gods.

**_I'm tired of werebeasts and vampires_**, said Sana Knowingblameless, goddess of the moon, justice, and chaos. **_Let's try something else._**

And so Nimu Loudsiege of Loghollow was no more. Instead, a stray goose returned to Loghollow that day and joined the hamlet's livestock, for there was cracked corn aplenty in the food troughs. Some months later, Sahthet Trampledgrape, butcher and town drunkard, reported that he had tried and failed to slaughter a goose, but as Sahthet was known to have difficulties with aim and honesty alike, no one thought much of it. A nameless goose set off into the wilderness that day to seek their fortune, and life went on.

* * *

In the year 1273 of the Age of the Dragon, the elves of the Cerulean Hills fought and defeated the dwarves of the Entrancing Vestibule at Hushedbust. As the victors devoured the corpses of the fallen, the surviving dwarves fled into the Jungles of Pleading, there to eke out a miserable subsistence whilst hiding from leopardmen and the other dangers of the wilds.

* * *

In the year 1313 of the Age of the Dragon, seven surviving dwarves of the Entrancing Vestibule gathered in the tavern at the human town of Lilacmarsh to set out for their new home in the far south: the Endless Icefields.

"Why are we going to live on a glacier again?" Odur Craftlabor asked; a fine blacksmith, but not terribly bright.

"There are no elves there," Etur Stormthief replied. She was a mechanic by trade, a plotter by nature, and had gathered this expedition by sending discreet letters to all the various human villages and having them posted in the local taverns and temples. She had also carefully traced out the limit of how far the elves were willing to travel from their treehouses on a map, and spread it out for all to see.

"So if we live anywhere with vegetation, they'll find us and kill us," said Nod Seedburst, a farmer and herbalist. "Wonderful."

"Didn't the war start because Hushedbust cut down too many trees?" asked Medtob Haleroots, a brewer and cook by trade. "I'm all for it. Let's go live in the cold."

"But are there any necromancer towers?" said two voices in unison: siblings Koman Whiskerbrew and Kethil Copperchannel. They had come from Armorbait, far on the other side of the Misty Mountains, which was rumored to have an undead problem.

Etur shook her head. "No undead. No elves. Only ice."

"Sounds great," Nod said with a pronounced lack of enthusiasm. "Tell me the caverns stretch that far, at least."

"There's no roads in the deep out that way," Etur said, and she took out another map: the three layers of caverns which stretched out beneath the earth, and the paths the dwarves of the Entrancing Vestibule had once made through them. "We'll have to go by the overland route."

Underneath the table, a nameless goose listened as the dwarves discussed their future.

* * *

They didn't notice their stowaway until they'd already reached their new home.

"What is that goose doing out of the cage?" Etur asked as she carefully inked the word 'Chillburrows' at the top of a clean sheet of pigtail paper. "I thought we had all the livestock locked up."

"I'll go handle it," Nod said. But Etur saw that the goose was out again a few hours later, when it reached up over the edge of the table and stole her accounting of their supplies just as she was dipping her pen in ink.

"Medtob!" Etur shouted. "How does everyone feel about goose spleen for dinner?"

There was nowhere to hide on the glacier, and only a single stairwell pierced the ice as Koman and Kethil dug ever deeper in search of the caverns. So it was strange that all together, seven dwarves could not find a single stray goose. Meanwhile, inside the goose cage in the wagon, no one noticed that there were now seven geese, and by the time Etur made another accounting of their supplies, she'd forgotten that they'd only brought six from Lilacmarsh.

And life went on.

* * *

"I've got the beds made." Urdim Riddleknife, carpenter, doctor, and general user of sharp objects, had joined their little expedition in Loghollow, just before their final trek south into the icefields; now he poked his head around the edge of the rough corridor. Etur had commandeered the little space as her office, although it was still full of loose rock from the miners' hasty tunneling, as it was also well out of the cold.

Etur yawned. "That's great! Go ahead and get the others to help you set them up so we can all get some sleep."

"They're all set up." Urdim shuffled his feet.

"Well? What's the problem?"

"…There's a goose."

There was indeed a goose, and it hissed when she approached the bed on the end of the row. Five more were filled; the others were leaving the goose for her and Urdim to deal with. Urdim wrung his hands.

"Go and get your axe," Etur ordered.

"I already tried that." Urdim pulled the handle free from under the sixth bed; the copper blade of the axe was bent in a U-shape, utterly useless. "I don't think it's a normal goose."

"I can reforge the axe!" Odur said from her bed on the other end of the row. "Later. Once I wake up."

Etur nodded slowly. "Fine. Everyone get some sleep." She glared at the goose. The goose honked once.

"Go away!" said Nod. He wasn't talking to the goose.

Etur turned around and went back to her office. The goose had made it quite obvious where the authority rested here, and it wasn't with her.

* * *

Everyone sat in the kitchen stockpile after a long day hauling water from a hole in the cavern roof to toss onto the bare stone of the future fungi farms. There were reptile men in the caverns, so Koman had bricked up the opening, Kethil had built a well, and Medtob and Nod had resorted to their backup plan: make mud, then use it to grow mushrooms.

The goose waddled into the stockroom, bold as brass.

Etur sighed and dipped her tankard in the last barrel of dwarven ale; this was a battle not worth fighting.

"Shouldn't we… do something?" Kuthil asked.

"Like what?" Etur squinted at the goose.

**_Honk!_** The goose hopped onto a barrel of frog meat and started eating. As usual, the cats cowered in the far corner of the room.

"There's nothing _to_ do," Etur went on. "We can't kill it. We can technically cage it or tie it down, but it will get out as soon as someone isn't looking. It won't stand still to be smashed, either. So we may as well accept that Chillburrows has eight citizens now, and one of them has feathers."

"It needs a name," Medtob decided.

"It's fierce," Nod said. "How about Zikel?"

"Zikel Proudhonk," Koman said.

And so the goose was nameless no longer.

* * *

That autumn and winter, they received two new groups of migrants from Armorbait and further away. There were skilled crafters among them, and several married couples with children. Etur rejoiced as she added their names to the census.

"The goose is Zikel Proudhonk," Nod told all the new residents of Chillburrows as he dished out cave wheat biscuits to their plates and fresh ale to their tankards. "Be polite."

There was some honking as the new dwarves learned the rules, and Urdim had several scrapes and bruises to bandage up as some fools attempted to assert authority they didn't have against a bird who didn't care, but all in all, the new residents settled down into Chillburrows quite nicely. It helped that they'd brought a sack of corn with them; Zikel far preferred it to dwarven wheat.

* * *

The first of Granite, 1314, dawned with a loud discussion in the new tavern, The Miracle of Honks.

"There's no king," Nod said blearily; he and Medtob had gone without booze for several weeks as they'd had a bumper crop of plump helmets to harvest before they rotted in the fields, and both were suffering for the lack. "We need a king."

"Or queen!" Medtob said, sloshing her tankard around. "Don't be a jerk."

"A monarch, anyway," Nod said. "Someone to tell us what to make and what not to sell when the humans come."

"But who?" Dumed Frogswallow, one of the new migrants, asked. "The expedition leader?"

"Absolutely not," Etur said as she took a big gulp of mushroom wine. "I refuse. Find someone else." Zikel sat on her lap, fluffed out. She looked at the goose and offered her tankard; Zikel started guzzling away.

Urdim started laughing. "That's a proper dwarven goose!"

Etur cocked her head. "We need a monarch, and they'll be useless for any work once they're elected, right?"

Everyone nodded. That was indeed the tradition.

"I nominate Zikel Proudhonk for monarch!" Etur declared, and she thrust her tankard in the air.

It was a fine solution to the problem, everyone agreed. Once they'd found the magma deep in the earth, Odur forged their new leader a little collar of gold, and Etur managed to bribe Zikel with the last of the corn for long enough to clasp it on.

In commemoration, Koman and Kethil dug out new chambers to serve as Zikel's throne room, and feeding hall, and nesting chamber, and tomb, and all the dwarves of Chillburrows filled the rooms with the finest furniture they could make. Kethil painstakingly engraved the walls and floors with pictures of geese and dwarves and corn aplenty, and Etur hauled the goose's favorite bed down to the nesting chamber herself.

For the first time in forty-one years, the dwarves of the Entrancing Vestibule had a new home, and a new leader, and life was good.

**Author's Note:**

> Epilogue:
> 
> "What the fuck." Kedram Eastfeather shied away from the dwarven trade depot. She hadn't trekked all the way south of Loghollow with two yaks and an archer, braving polar bears and yeti alike, just to be menaced by geese.  
"That's Zikel Proudhonk, our monarch," the dwarven negotiator said. "Be polite."  
The goose in question was sitting on top of her yak, preventing her from unloading her trade goods. Kedram sighed. "I take it you're buying all of that, then?"  
"Yep!" The little dwarf clapped. "If the boss says so, we have to!"  
She'd heard stories about how weird dwarves could be, but this was an entirely different kind of ridiculousness. Kedram shrugged and dug her inventory list out of her pocket, then eyed the masterful steel serrated disc that one dwarf had just dumped out of a wheelbarrow. "Well. I guess we can make a deal."  
Maybe she could get a few free meals out of it when she told _this_ story back in Loghollow.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Thanks to Demitas for beta reading.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [This Feathered Crown [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21449011) by [blackglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackglass/pseuds/blackglass)


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